


green lightning

by mayfriend



Series: The Road Not Travelled [2]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crucifixion, Episode Tag, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, Gen, Green Kryptonite, Hallucinations, Hazing, Hurt Clark Kent, Mental Disintegration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:20:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23752996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayfriend/pseuds/mayfriend
Summary: In thePilot, Clark is put up on a cross in nothing but his underwear and a Kryptonite necklace. In canon, Lex rescues him soon after, judging by how quickly Clark recovers; what if Lex had decided to work late?It’s impossible to measure time, in the dark. He’s not even a boy anymore, not really, just an exposed nerve scratching at the void- but he wasn’t even a boy in the first place, was he? Was he? What is he now, with his brain of straw, heart of ice, veins full of fire?Scarecrow,the boys had said, shouted, sang, almost reverent as they painted that bloody letter on his chest,scarecrow, scarecrow, scarecrow.If he’s not a real boy, does that make him a puppet? Does that make him a thing? Does that make him-God, what does that make him?He’s so tired. It hurts so much. It’s been years, up on this post, has to have been. He can feel every inch of his body stiffening into something less than human, something new and terrible.Nobody’s coming,the corn reminds him, the taunt almost painless now that everything is pain. The sides of it are razor sharp, but he’s already bleeding.
Relationships: Clark Kent & Lex Luthor
Series: The Road Not Travelled [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1626427
Comments: 11
Kudos: 52





	green lightning

**Author's Note:**

> Clark is what, fifteen _at most_ when he's left to (unintentionally, to be fair to Whitney et al) die on that cross? So I decided to whump the hell out of him, and have the kryptonite do more damage than making him weak, getting worse the longer he's exposed, which here has been several hours. This shit can _kill_ him, and I think that should be more obvious... so I did this. 
> 
> Sorry, bud. Promise I'll stop torturing you at some point.

It’s hard to measure time, in the dark. He never wears a watch, doesn’t like the way they feel, but Clark knows even if he did it wouldn’t do any good. Even if the football team had let him keep it, like they hadn’t let him keep his clothes or his dignity, his arms were tied up and behind him. 

Maybe if he wasn’t wearing the necklace, that green-bright-poison-death shard, he’d have the strength to twist until it was visible. Hell, if he wasn’t wearing the necklace, he wouldn’t be here at all. He could’ve run, could’ve fought, could have done anything but lay back and take it. If he wasn’t wearing the necklace, maybe he’d have enough presence of mind to count, to estimate, to at the very least guess at the time now that the sun’s gone down and the game’s surely over. 

For anyone else, it would be cold. But Clark isn’t cold. Clark’s on fire. He’s a bubbling sack of flesh, sure to break open at any moment, blood boiling like oil, every brush of the beautifully cut stone a brand. He tries to hunch forward, so that it doesn’t make contact with his skin, but with the way he’s tied, with the way he’s trembling, it still does. 

The only light is from the necklace, bathing him in it’s green glow. He hadn’t ever seen a rock glow like that before, not ever, let alone pulse like a living thing. All these thoughts - about the light, about the watch he doesn’t have, about the game - are just fragments behind the only thing that he can truly focus on, and that’s the pain. 

It’s- every aching muscle he’s ever had, it’s third degree burns he never got, it’s white-hot knives in every cell, it’s burning, burning, _burning._ It hurts so bad that he can’t even scream. It hurts so bad that he thinks he might die of it, and he means it, he really does. He doesn’t mean it like Pete means it after a cross country run, or how Chloe means it when she says she’s dying for a coffee, or the even the kind of death that comes after two straight hours of chores. He means- he means death. 

He thinks it’s killing him. He thinks it’s really killing him. 

It’s been hours, he thinks. It can’t have been days, although sometimes it feels like it could’ve been. It would have been light, wouldn’t it? The sun would've come up. The night is dark. But maybe, maybe he’s just gone blind. When they first tied him up here, the worst of it was the shock, the fear, the sudden and inexplicable weakness. Oh, it hurt then, it didn’t hurt any less than it did now, but there had been something other than the pain- he’d been able to think. Able to whine, maybe whisper, if not able to shout and scream. It hadn’t been long enough for it to be everything yet.

There had been- there had been somebody there. Not a football player. Somebody whose face he can’t remember, now that there’s just pain and pain and pain, and his thoughts are fractured and jumbled. Somebody whose face he knew. 

He knows he’d asked them to get him down. _Help me,_ he managed, but they hadn’t. They’d gone away, somewhere- somewhere important. Somewhere they shouldn’t have gone. Clark can’t care about where they did or didn’t go, not when he can’t remember what was so important about it anymore. He cares that they didn’t help him. That they didn’t get the rock off, that they didn’t help, that nobody _helped._

Maybe they can see it, all of them, he thinks. Maybe that’s why he’s always been on the sidelines, not just awkwardness like he’d always thought. Maybe everybody except him knew about what he was, what he is - alien, freak, monster. Maybe that’s why they left him up here; he certainly can’t remember the reason now. Maybe that’s why nobody’s coming. 

_Nobody’s coming_ , the thought echoes around what is left of his mind. _Nobody’s coming, nobody’s coming, nobody’s coming-_

There’s something wet on his face. “Nobody’s coming,” somebody says, right next to him, but when he jerks his head to the side - what little scraps of energy he had left, wasted in a moment - there’s nobody there but the whispering corn. “Nobody’s coming,” the maize taunts him, “nobody’s coming, nobody’s coming…”

It’s impossible to measure time, in the dark. He’s not even a boy anymore, not really, just an exposed nerve scratching at the void- but he wasn’t even a boy in the first place, was he? Was he? What is he now, with his brain of straw, heart of ice, veins full of fire? _Scarecrow,_ the boys had said, shouted, sang, almost reverent as they painted that bloody letter on his chest, _scarecrow, scarecrow, scarecrow._

If he’s not a real boy, does that make him a puppet? Does that make him a thing? Does that make him-

God, what does that make him?

He’s so tired. It hurts so much. It’s been years, up on this post, has to have been. He can feel every inch of his body stiffening into something less than human, something new and terrible. _Nobody’s coming,_ the corn reminds him, the taunt almost painless now that everything is pain. The sides of it are razor sharp, but he’s already bleeding. 

The pulses aren’t coming any quicker, but he thinks he’s getting slower, thinks he might be coming to a stop. He’s out of anything resembling a new thought; all there is, all there is is the dark, and the throb, and the fire, and the voice. The dark, the throb, the fire, the voice. Stretching and twisting and whining- the dark, the throb, the fire, the voice. The dark, the dark, the fire, the throb, the voice, the dark, the voice, the fire, the fire, the _fire-_

“-my god,” he hears someone say. He doesn’t flinch this time. Doesn’t even look. His world is smaller than it’s ever been before, just the black field and flare of the green light and the burn of the blood and the-

The voice? The voice. He knows that voice. 

“Clark?” It says again. That’s him. That’s his name. 

He can’t reply. He couldn’t even if he had the words to say. Everything is locked up, every muscle contracted and calcified. He can barely open his eyes, and when he does torchlight - white, glorious torchlight, something he’d never thought he’d seen again - sears into his retinas like a brand. 

Time passes. There’s more now, though - the field isn’t empty. There’s movement, behind him, somebody sawing at the rope, somebody saying his name in the middle of a river of words - _it’s going to be okay, you’re going to be okay, you’re doing so well, just a little more, I’m almost there, I promise, I promise, just a little longer and-_

All at once, Clark’s right arm is free, and he sags against the empty air, an involuntary moan of agony passing through his lips. 

He’s got to do something. There was- there was somebody, before. Somebody else. Someone who didn’t help him, who was going somewhere, who left him- it matters but Clark is still on fire, still burning, and his hand is veined with black and green when he tries to reach up and pull his slow death off his neck. 

His left arm is free next, and he falls in a heap on the dirt-clod ground. He doesn’t hear the chain snap, but he realises that’s what must have happened, as he finds enough power in his arms to push himself to his knees, to blindly crawl away from the green killer, into the darkness. “Jesus Christ,” Lex swears, and Clark can’t be sure but he thinks the other man’s hands are shaking as he crouches at Clark’s side, “who did this to you?” 

“Help me,” Clark manages to croak out, as his vision doubles, quadruples, and the static in his ears grows louder, and the metal band around his chest loosens now that he can finally say it, now that there’s somebody around to hear it, the plea that’s been buzzing through his veins for hours tasting like poison on his tongue. “Help me,” he says again, because he doesn’t think he could help himself if he tried, because he's too weak to stand, to sob, to scream.

And this time, this time somebody does.

**Author's Note:**

> The only plot hole here is one that I don't know how to fill, so I'm gonna acknowledge it now so the comments aren't just people pointing it out - in canon Lex goes into the field because he sees Jeremy leaving, and hears Clark say 'help'. Here, Jeremy came and went hours before so there's no real reason for Lex to go in, especially as I explicitly say Clark can't talk after so much kryptonite exposure. However, it's also a plot-hole on the show because there's no way Lex heard Clark say 'help' from inside his car on the road when Clark could barely speak and was tied up well inside the corn field. 
> 
> The answer? Clark is a very mild psychic (he's obviously got some kind of natural psychic ability due to his Kryptonian physiology, as Ryan couldn't read his mind) and I choose to believe that because his life was in danger he unintentionally sent out a plea for help to anyone within range, which in this fic and in canon is Lex - he can't _force_ anyone to help, hence Jeremy not staying, but it's what made Lex stop in my AU.
> 
> Now that the explanation for the thing that you probably wouldn't have even noticed is over, please leave kudos and a review! :)
> 
> Find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/_mayfriend_) and on [tumblr](http://mayfriend.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
